Conventional vehicles include on-board monitoring systems that continuously monitor vehicle systems and components to evaluate performance. The data generated by these monitoring systems can also be downloaded or transmitted to off-board diagnostic and prognostic systems that are used to diagnose and predict faults in the vehicle systems and components.
In conventional prognostic systems, the vehicle is configured to wirelessly transmit data regarding vehicle systems and components to a remote system executing a prognostic algorithm at a fixed frequency based on the passage of time or the occurrence of an event (e.g., starting the vehicle). The remote system is also configured to execute the prognostic algorithm at fixed frequency (and often, continuously). Transmitting data from the vehicle to the remote system, however, occupies valuable bandwidth within wireless communication channels that are handling ever increasing amounts of data relating to vehicle safety, navigation, and personal entertainment. Transmitting data from the vehicle to the remote system also incurs costs from wireless communication providers. Further, each execution of a prognostic algorithm on the remote system requires use of valuable processing and data storage resources.